‘A band member got high and jumped on a forklift’: unsung heroes of the music industry share their secrets
Lester Smith is gatekeeper of the microphones at Abbey Road studios. He joined as a technical engineer in the early 70s; Paul McCartney was starting Wings, Pink Floyd would soon be in to record what would become one of the bestselling albums of all time, The Dark Side of the Moon, and the studio would later welcome a young Kate Bush. Throughout it all, Lester was in the technical room, learning how to engineer on EMI’s world-class recording equipment. He’s there to this day. Lester fell in love with microphones, and for decades has been developing and refining his skills in this corner of Abbey Road. These are the mics that have taken in the sounds – and spit – of the greatest singers in the world.
The music made inside those walls has changed, as have the faces coming in and out – even much of the building itself. But Lester has been through it all, working from his little office, building up stacks of carefully labelled valves and other skeletons of machinery around him. For all the years Lester’s been behind the mic, he and the other engineers and facilities staff have been keeping those studios alive. They tick away behind the scenes to give us the music that fills our ears every day. The music world is full of people like Lester. Although, more often than not, their contributions go largely unrecognised. Here are a few of the other unsung heroes who take the music from the studio to the stage.
The songwriter Michelle Escoffery
Most of us have heard a lyric, melody or riff written by Michelle Escoffery. She is an award-winning songwriter, who has written tunes for the starry likes of Tina Turner, Artful Dodger, Beverley Knight and All Saints. In fact, she can’t even tell you how many songwriting credits she has.
Escoffery came from a musical family in south London. Her family singing group, the Escofferys, were signed to Atlantic records in the early 90s. But growing up, it was her sister who was the main songwriter. “She lured me into her bedroom and practically forced me to help her write some songs,” Escoffery says. “That’s what sparked my interest and I started looking at how you shape songs, what you talk about, and the art of storytelling.” Songwriters are invaluable in the industry, Escoffery says. “If you don’t have somebody that can tell a story, you don’t have a song, and then you don’t have an artist.”
Escoffery was one of only two female songwriters signed to EMI Publishing, and it’s there that she made her first major hit – which all started from a guitar lick she was playing around with. Liberty X’s Just a Little debuted at No 1 in 2002 and won Escoffery an Ivor Novello award. “It was actually a song that we were pitching for Tom Jones. The idea around it was the innocence of a woman and a woman being sexy without knowing that she’s sexy. It’s a compliment that you’ve got this essence and you actually don’t even know what you have … and the rest is history.”
Catherine Marks sees her role of music producer as more of a facilitator, someone who extracts the artist’s vision. Her work goes beyond the weeks or months spent in the studio – she will discuss song structures, band dynamics, sit in on rehearsals. “All this information is important for me so that I can make the studio process as seamless as possible. We need to be able to have that freedom to create the art.”
She began working in studios more than 20 years ago, first as an assistant to the assistant of the British music producer Flood, making the tea and getting lunches. The early years were made up of little sleep and long days, as she worked her way up to become a multi award-winning producer and mixing engineer. Her credits include producing and mixing Wolf Alice’s Moaning Lisa Smile, and mixing Masseduction by St Vincent. Her work as a producer is about “the chemistry you have with the artist and the whole team involved in the project,” she says, “creating the atmosphere and feeling through the tracking process.”
“I often ask: how do we want an album to look visually? If you close your eyes, what is the colour? These intangible things can help bring another level to the album, rather than just getting the perfect snare sound or whatever,” she says. “The mixing process is the final realisation of that vision.” Artists work with Marks for the raw and natural sound she brings to records. “I love things that feel a bit rough around the edges,” she says. “My holy grail is something that’s sonically perfect, but feels amazing. I’m still striving for that.”
The tour manager David Norman
David Norman remembers the day Prince called him up and asked him to production-manage the European leg of his 2014 tour. He had nine days to pull it all together. “I didn’t sleep for eight-and-a-half days.” He is now 60, but was the tour manager for his first bands in his late teens, driving them around the States and doing a dozen jobs – logistics, moving gear, setting up instruments – but only being paid for driving the van.
He has gone on to tour-manage artists such as Green Day and, more recently, Tyler, the Creator. “You’re really just taking care of the band and the artist; that includes booking all the travel, hotels and ground flights, and getting them from point A to point B in a timely manner.” Norman is, of course, “very good at organising things … It becomes second nature after a while, but every artist is different.”
Tour managers are “the psychiatrist, psychologist, banker, parent figure”, Norman says. “I’ve had a member get super high and jump on a forklift, take it out of the venue and then have a low-speed police chase downtown.” He’s a babysitter too, he laughs – but won’t name names.
The venue owner Paul Jackson
Most bands are indebted to the local venues that put on their first gigs. “It’s about giving people a start,” says Paul Jackson, owner of the Adelphi Club in Hull, winner of Music Week’s 2022 award for grassroots venue of the year.
Jackson bought the building back in 1984. It was the cheapest place he could find, on a residential street in a city that, at the time, had no dedicated spaces for live music: “I managed to borrow 58 grand. I must have been a pretty good bullshitter.” Jackson loves music and musicians, but also wanted to create a space that supported his principles of inclusivity. “I was living in a city that was characterised by low horizons. I wanted to change that perception,” he says.
“The music agenda I set grew and grew, and became very effective. We’ve got an enormous CV as a music venue.” (Pulp, Radiohead and the Stone Roses are just a few of the massive bands who have passed through the Adelphi.) He says great acts often survive particularly bad debut gigs, and “the great pleasure is watching them get better”. But this can only really happen in grassroots venues. “As a small venue, in terms of capacity, we can’t put on the biggest bands in the world, but we can put on the best bands in an industry that rewards mediocrity.” It’s about having a space for musicians to hone their craft – and for the community to be a part of that, too.
“There can be power and intimacy in a small venue. The greatest crowd response is to see an audience member crying. They’re not crying because they’ve wasted a tenner,” he says. “They’re crying because they’re overcome by the emotion and intimacy of a performance.”